MACMA - Manboobs

Creating and publishing content without violating laws or breaking other sets of rules, can often be a normal part of an advertiser´s job. However, in the case of this campaing, the obstacle presented was a very challenging one.

Macma, an organization devoted to fight against breast cancer, wanted to create a campaign that could make more women to check theirselves for this disease, in order improve prevention (67% of women don´t do it). David, the agency, knew that a great way to reach their audience was through social media, since women check their mobile phones 110 times a day, among other things to keep up to date with their platforms. The test is simple and free, no doctor or nurse is required to perform it, and no instrumental is necessary either -just one´s own hands-. An explanation on how to self administrate the exam was clearly a great way to achieve the campaign´s goal, considering many women don´t know how to do it.

However, Facebook forbids to feature female breast if the nipple shows. The ban applies for both the most used social network of the world, as well as Instagram. Getting around this limitation seemed impossible for a campaign like this. How can you explain a breast cancer test without showing the woman´s breasts?

Agency David had a very simple and brilliant answer for that: man-breasts. Since a man´s chest is not included in the Facebook´s policy, it was perfectly permissible to feature the full explanation of the breast cancer exam, with the help of Henry -the man whose chest was displayed in the footage-. The possibility to stress the fact that men can also have breast cancer, was also a good reason for the sex switch.

This way it didn´t only became possible to publish and share the campaign on Facebook. In the case of this ad, a lot of imagination was clearly needed to comply with the social network´s ban, in order to contribute to a social health issue, which is completely out of the question. So it also fueled the debate on what should be forbidden or not to display online, which helped the campaign to gain momentum, on social and traditional media as well.

JavaScript is disabled!To display this content, you need a JavaScript capable browser.